Feather

Life is a lone gray bird
of undetermined kind,
flying slow away;
I don’t know how long
it will remain in sight
or how to call it back.
A single feather remains,
a cast off token that
drifted down to me.
I take it up, hold it
in my fingers twirl
it quick then slow,
following the play
of shadow over its
directional silk,
some lighter shades
in the down of it,
the slow darkening
outward along its length,
and the indefinable
curve sheens of light
along on the surface,
somehow reflected
from the smooth
unsmoothness there.
I begin to see or
maybe imagine hints
of depth, color, shifts
of blue, even pink,
but not enough,
not nearly enough.
And how could there
be enough? It is
after all only a
feather that fell
to me in passing
from a lone gray bird
I held in my hand once,
now flying slow away.